Sunday, April 02, 2006
Finders, But Not Keepers
“Finders, keepers, losers, weepers.” A selfish little rhyme that inexplicably makes people feel justified in pocketing something that does not belong to them. But is the value of the found object relevant when deciding whether it is acceptable to keep it?
A San Francisco man recently found a purse full of jewels worth $1 million, and turned it in to the police. In a television interview, the man said that even if he had known the value of the jewelry, he still would have done the same thing. The interviewer’s reaction bothered me. She seemed intent on extracting some greedy confession from the guy. “Did you think about what you could do with that kind of wealth?” she goaded. The man answered simply that it was the right thing to do to turn in the purse.
Just a few days before I saw this story on TV, I found a dollar bill on the hall floor at work. I took it to the main office to turn it in. The business manager smiled a little patronizingly and told me just to keep it. I pressed her to set it aside in case the rightful owner should come to claim it. She reluctantly accepted it.
Simple decency and conscionable behavior require the return of a lost article to its owner. One dollar or one million dollars—in the long run, it should not matter.
A San Francisco man recently found a purse full of jewels worth $1 million, and turned it in to the police. In a television interview, the man said that even if he had known the value of the jewelry, he still would have done the same thing. The interviewer’s reaction bothered me. She seemed intent on extracting some greedy confession from the guy. “Did you think about what you could do with that kind of wealth?” she goaded. The man answered simply that it was the right thing to do to turn in the purse.
Just a few days before I saw this story on TV, I found a dollar bill on the hall floor at work. I took it to the main office to turn it in. The business manager smiled a little patronizingly and told me just to keep it. I pressed her to set it aside in case the rightful owner should come to claim it. She reluctantly accepted it.
Simple decency and conscionable behavior require the return of a lost article to its owner. One dollar or one million dollars—in the long run, it should not matter.
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Thank you for another wonderful post cyppy!
The reporter, and your business manager, were focused soley on the value of the objects found. However, you and the gentleman who found the jewels, by your actions, ended up far richer.
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The reporter, and your business manager, were focused soley on the value of the objects found. However, you and the gentleman who found the jewels, by your actions, ended up far richer.
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